The red sun, reflected on the square, of the TV...

I'm back to work as an urban planner, exactly one year after I took redundancy from my previous job. I'm grateful, of course, especially given the area I am now in charge of assessing planning applications is ridiculously beautiful, with some of the most stunning English landscape I have ever seen. I even have a favourite view from  my car on my commute into work, the morning light radiates gold off a vast wheat field viewed from the brow of a hill, off the A429 toward Stratford. However living in Coventry I sometimes forget that nature is everywhere.  Living in the city you have just to listen a little harder sometimes. I knew I'd find some haikus which reverberate with how I'm feeling right now...

Instead of foxes howling, or waterfalls, there's a car-roaring up the street, or the drone of  a refrigerator ... part of the life in which we are living.

             The red sun
              reflected in the square
                of the TV.

        Neons flash red & green.
April rains on still street.  Man
   Nods.  Red lights blink, blink.

                        After April rain
                        -in puddles of oil
                        city rainbows

        The whole block flooded.
        Men hauling pumps & hoses;
        children, plastic boats.

                        A great freight truck
                                        lit up like a town
                        through the dark stony desert.
(www.haikuworld.org)


So as sure as nature is found in the city, human nature leaves traces, samskaras if you like and cuts tracks in nature. Haiku can express not only nature, but human nature too. The name for  this kind of haiku is "senryu". Putting human nature in the foreground and nature in the background, everyone can see something of universal human nature in themselves or the world around.